Slices of Life
by j4bb3rwocky
Summary: Character studies, unconnected oneshots, set during SO-F. Fang/Max, Fang/Lissa, Sam/Max, Iggy/Tess, and various platonic relationships.
1. Chapter 1

I suppose this is the literary equivalent of posting your rough sketches of a character. These were/are continuing to be written over the course of an afternoon. They aren't intended to further any plot and only barely exist in the canon universe. I'm just writing them to get a better feel for the characters and posting them because I want other people to see these characters how I see them and talk to me about that.

(So, you know, review, and talk to me about it.)

I'm expecting several installments in this. Max + JJ, Fang/Lissa, Iggy + Nudge, Iggy/Tess, Max II + Ari. Dumb stuff. Probably nothing over 1500 words. Maybe even a Max + Fang or Max/Fang installment. Maybe a Max/Sam installment, who knows.

(Listening to: _Two is Better Than One _by Boys Like Girls.)

* * *

><p>"So," JJ said, flopping face-down onto my bed, "what do you want to do?" The words were muffled, as she was speaking through several layers of oh-so-fluffy blanket, but I could hear her fine. Being a mutant freak does have its perks.<p>

I shrugged from my spot on the rug. It was a nice rug. Softer than some beds that I had slept on, actually. I could probably sleep on this rug if she stayed the night. Did humans do that? I know that we had had sleepovers back in the E-shaped house, and that we shared rooms—we had to. But if JJ had a house to go back to, would she stay over here?

"No, really," JJ said, her voice less muffled this time. She had turned her head to the side. "What do you want to do? We don't have homework, or projects, or jobs—jeez, we have to get those in _junior year_, that's like forever. We could have a movie marathon, go to the park, go to the _mall_, I think I know a guy who sells beer."

"What do you do at the mall?" I asked.

She shrugged, the fabric moving under her shoulders. "Wander around, buy bras and give them to your brothers. I did that once for my cousin's birthday. The look on his face when he saw that pink lace…"

We laughed, and I tried to imagine Fang in that situation. Would he freak out, or just raise an eyebrow at me? Would he even react? It felt like we were growing apart here, and not knowing how he would react—it was weird, kind of unsettling. Like putting your foot down and the ground not being there.

And, jeez, my _brother_—right. My _brother_, who I had kissed on the _mouth _back in August. My face heated up. We hadn't talked about that, ever, and I didn't want to talk about it, ever.

Or did I? Maybe it would make things less weird. Maybe we could go back to normal.

To get my mind off of Fang and me and _kissing_, jeez, I said, "How about a movie marathon?" I knew what those were, thanks to overhearing several cafeteria conversations on the topic. "We have, um, _Mean Girls_, _Breakfast at Tiffany's_, uh… _Rambo_…" Those were good movies, right?

"You had me at _Rambo_," JJ said, standing and stretching. "You set up the movies, I'll head out for a second and get us Coke."

We ended up watching _Rambo_, _Karate Kid_, and a bunch of Bruce Lee films as the sun sunk low in the sky and painted the living room walls with ten different shades of orange. By the time it was dark out our mouths and hands were sticky with Coke and popcorn butter, and the other kids still hadn't come back yet. I ran through a quick itinerary as the end credits for _Circle of Iron _scrolled across the screen. Nudge had a party/sleepover, Gazzy and Angel had gotten Anne to take them out to a pool afterschool, Iggy was hanging out with a few guys who wanted to rebuild a car, and Fang was—

Fang was off being Fang somewhere. Probably with the Red-Haired Wonder. My face twisted.

"Want to go out?" I asked JJ. Over the course of the afternoon she had shifted positions like twenty times; at the moment she was sitting upside-down on the sofa, with her back pressed against the seat cushions and her lower legs dangling over the back. She had taken off her shirt, too, and tied it around her head—she said to stop her hair from getting sweaty.

It would have been nice if I could have done that without her running away screaming. My wings aren't _ugly_, by any stretch of the word, but they also aren't _normal_.

"Sure." She wrestled herself back into her shirt, buttoned it up halfway. "I don't think it's that cold out," she said, and glanced at the stairs that led to the second floor, where my bedroom was. "And I don't feel like going up, y'know?"

I nodded. There were days back at the E-shaped house where I wouldn't change out of my pajamas until it was time to go back to sleep, and only then because the first set of pajamas had gotten sweaty over the course of the day's workouts and I wanted to sleep in a fresh pair.

We headed outside, towards the edges of Anne's big, sprawling lawn. The grass was cool beneath my bare feet, but not cold enough for me to regret not slipping on my sneakers. It felt odd to be out after hours of staring at a T.V. screen, but the night sky above our heads and the cool fall air brought me back to myself. How many nights had I stood outside, watching the stars? Looking at the moon?

"That's the Big Dipper," I told JJ, pointing. "The star in the end of the handle—it always points north." I'd used it to find my way back to the E-shaped house more times than I could count, when late-night flights went further than I had expected. Flying off nightmares had the cost of getting me horribly, stupidly lost, and if Jeb hadn't told us about the North Star, I would have frozen to death during my first winter of freedom.

"Which one?" JJ asked.

I lifted her hand and pointed.

"Oh, okay. Hey, over there is Orion!" She moved our hands to a cluster of stars, three of which formed a line. "His belt's the easiest to pick out—he's the only one I really know, along with Sirius, over there."

"Hey, that's one more than I do."

She grinned. "Yeah, but you know a _useful _one. That's definitely cooler, and I'll keep it in mind for when I run away to live in the forest."

I laughed, but wondered: _is she for real_? The city would be a better choice—easier to get food, for one, and she could sleep in the subway tunnel. There were things in the forest… bears, poisonous plants… Erasers.

"You're welcome to come along," she added, grinning at me. "But come on, let's go back in. I'm freezing out here."

"I'll make you hot chocolate," I offered, and we headed back inside.


	2. Chapter 2

(Listening to: _Bet My Life _by Imagine Dragons and _Kill Your Heroes _by Awolnation.)

A lot of people write Lissa... a certain way. Not going to get into the validity of that characterization here. I'm trying to interpret her character through the lens of what we've seen-she's polite-and what we know about women that Fang likes-they're strong-minded and determined. So here, enjoy Lissa the fourteen-year-old try-hard, who is studying for the PSATs a year before she has to take them.

* * *

><p>The restaurant that they're sitting in is decorated in blue, gray, and green, and the light of the sun, redirected through the shades, sends flickers of light glancing off the flecks of metal and colored glass in the tables. They're in a table towards the back, next to a window, and Fang's seat faces the door. If anybody comes in, meaning trouble, it won't be too hard to smash the window with a chair, jump out, and fly off.<p>

Lissa, sitting across from him and studying the menu, doesn't know that. The lone waitress, leaning against a wall and chatting with the chef in a language that Fang doesn't understand, doesn't know that. The chef, who bears a few nasty-looking old burn scars, might know. Fang isn't sure. Fang doesn't care.

"So what are you thinking of?" Lissa asks him. "We could split a few smaller dishes, if you're indecisive."

Fang shrugs. "Do you know what _udon_ is?"

"It's noodle soup. They add different stuff into it—here it's chicken, shrimp, or tofu, but I've seen places where you can get it with beef added. Beef's pretty expensive, though."

He nods, shrugs, closes the menu.

"So," she says, brushing an errant strand of hair back behind her ear, "what electives are you planning to take next semester?"

Fang shrugs. "Haven't thought about it."

"You really should; if you don't talk to professors early you'll end up with something ridiculous. My older sister wanted to take plant bio but ended up in _pottery _because she didn't register early. And the second quarter's ending pretty soon—it's almost fall break."

"Mmm-hmm." He stares at the table, takes a sip of sweetened tea. "What're you taking?"

She drums her fingers on the table, fast, like the heartbeat of a hummingbird. "I was thinking of Intro Stats, but that's a sophomore thing. Not that I couldn't test in, but I want to _know _the people there, you know? –Oh, I'm sorry, you transferred… anyway. Then there's the animal science and agriculture courses, and they seem cool, but since we're only taking ESS this year…" She sighs. "I'll probably just say _screw it _and take creative writing, but I'm already in PSAT prep, so it's like—double writing! Ugh." She slugs back the rest of her tea, draining the small cup in a single gulp.

"Huh." Fang shrugs, sips his tea.

The waitress comes, and they order—he gets shrimp udon, she gets a Philadelphia roll and miso soup.

As they wait, he asks her, "Do you come here often?"

She giggles, blushes. Her eyes sparkle in the afternoon light, and it's hard to look away from them. It's unfamiliar—emerald-green, and he's used to bronze—but it's still beautiful. "And what's a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?" she teases. "No, but I do come here sometimes. Sometimes I go get coffee, if I don't have a club meeting or cross-country practice."

"Cross-country?"

"Yeah, you got lucky. My coach has some big meeting for his other job, so he couldn't make practice today. So here I am!"

"Gracing me with your presence," he says, and raises an eyebrow.

She laughs again, this time covering her mouth with one hand. "Yep. Bask in my glory."

"I'm not worthy of licking your uniform shoes, O Goddess."

They're still laughing when their food comes.

It takes Fang ten minutes to figure out how to pick up food with his chopsticks, and thirty seconds to abandon them and resort to using the chopsticks to push noodles onto his spoon.

"That's a very complicated procedure you've got there, Nick," Lissa notes.

He nods once, shoulders hunched and brow furrowed.

The soup isn't _bad_, by any meaning of the word, but it's not what he's used to. The only noodles he's had have been spaghetti, and the shrimp tastes nothing like the canned tuna that he's eaten in the past. Not to mention that the shape of the spoon is weird.

They finish eating in relative silence, pay the bill, and head outside. It's a crisp afternoon in early November, and, in the quiet quasi-countryside, all he hears is the rumbling of the occasional engine and the crunching of leaves beneath their feet.

Lissa slips her arm through his, leans her head against his shoulder. "Autumn's my favorite season," she says. "Summer has too many bugs, and my allergies are awful in spring. Autumn's like—this balance."

"What about winter?"

"Winter's indoor season, and I hate indoor." She shrugs, her shoulder moving against his arm. "How about you?"

Fang looks up into the sky. It's clear blue, no hints of clouds. There's a hawk circling up above them. He doesn't say anything for a few moments, until—"I like autumn, but summer's pretty nice. What's winter like down here?"

Lissa shrugs. "It's not _bad_. I mean, I stay inside a lot during the winter because of midterms, indoor season, and swim club. But my sister's a total polar bear—she loves going out. I guess it can't be that awful."

"Huh."

"Anyway, here's my house. You can come in if you want, but—oh, your sister took your bag home, didn't she? You'd probably better head back so you don't get a late start on your homework." She lets go of his arm, spins to face him, and kisses him on the lips—standing tip-toe, closed-mouth—before turning and heading off, her hair glowing in the late-afternoon sun.


	3. Chapter 3

(Listening to: _We Are Young _by F. U. N.)

Iggy/Tess is legit one of the cutest ships in this series. Writing Iggy/Tess, however, is like pulling teeth. So enjoy this bloody, previously-located-in-my-gums installment.

* * *

><p>After about an hour of deliberation, the two of them had decided to head for the park. "I don't wander around this place very much," Tess had warned him, "I just come for soccer practice. So we're probably going to get lost. Um, really lost. It's a big park—kind of a small forest."<p>

Fortunately for the both of them, they hadn't gotten nearly as lost as they had feared. According to Tess, trails were marked and there was a park map every half-mile. Obviously, this meant nothing to Iggy, but he was able to tell with relative ease how far out into the forest they were by listening carefully for the screeching and shrieking of children as they clambered over various playground structures.

Right now, the kids were about a mile and a half away, and Iggy and Tess were sitting next to a lake, feet bare and jackets discarded by a tree five paces away. The water of the lake was lapping softly at their feet as they laid on their backs. Tess was cloudwatching.

"There's one that looks like a sheep. I mean, I guess all clouds look like sheep… horribly deformed but still fluffy and loveable sheep… but this one looks especially like a sheep. It's on the back of a dragon, which is about… hmmm… about not very far from one that looks like your little sister, the older little sister. Well, her head. The hair is all floating away from her face, and—oh, wow, now the dragon's eating her."

"Thank God," Iggy said. "Maybe then she'll stop stealing my ice cream."

Tess squeezed his hand. "Wait, now the dragon's exploding. Your sister apparently didn't taste that good."

Iggy laughed, but it felt like there were a thousand angry butterflies in his stomach. Or, to use a more accurate metaphor, like he had been force-fed radioactive food by a curious scientist. Because butterflies couldn't live inside the human body, according to Nudge.

"This is going to sound kind of lame," he said carefully, "But try sniffing the grass. In a legal way, as opposed to a _blaze it _kind of way. It smells really nice."

There was a pause as Tess inhaled. "You're right," she said, after a moment. "It does smell nice."

"It's not as cool as the clouds, sorry. But…"

"No, I think it's pretty great!" Tess objected. There was a rustling sound as she shifted on the grass. When she spoke again, her voice was slightly closer—had she turned on her side? "Really, Jeff. When we hang out, it's like… I notice more. You really help me appreciate the world. And in a way you know a lot more than me—remember how you told me about the birds, earlier this afternoon? I wouldn't be able to tell a robin from a crow, but you can pick them apart by the way their wings and their chirps sounded. And right now with the grass… that was something that nobody has ever gotten me to pay attention to."

Iggy shrugged. The tension in his stomach had moved to his throat, and his eyes felt kind of hot. Nobody had ever described it like that before, not even Nudge. "I… thanks."

Tess lifted their joined hands, and unlaced their fingers, before touching his hand to her face. "I'm crying now, this is so legit." And she was. She sniffled a little. "I cry when I get really intense. Also, did I just say _so legit _seriously?"

Iggy laughed, and turned on his side to face her. "You totally did. It was _so legit_."

"You're a jackass," Tess said, but Iggy could feel her mouth curve up into a smile.

She was still smiling when she leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. She kissed him on the nose, next, and then on the lips. Softly, slowly, and kind of messily, the kiss progressed.

Was there supposed to be spit? Was he doing something wrong? What if the inside of his mouth tasted like the garlic bread from lunch instead of the lemon gum that he had swallowed five minutes ago?

Tess bit his tongue.

"_Whaaa_?"

Tess jerked back.

"Oh, crap! Sorry! Crap, crap, crapnuggets. That was an accident. And not the way I wanted my first kiss to go. Not that I have any problems with you, but, like, the biting thing? Totally unplanned."

Iggy let out a sigh of relief. "Okay. I was worried that it was part of the plan. Good to know that it isn't."

"It would kind of suck if it was," Tess said. "Can you imagine? All the grownups and everybody older than seventeen wouldn't have a tongue anymore. And, Jesus, Jeff, I'm still really sorry—"

"Nah, it's cool. It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"You sure?"

"Hot coffee hurts more," Iggy reassured her, and leaned over to bump their foreheads together. "Really."

Tess laughed, sounding as nervous as he felt. "Still, let's wait until we try that again. And—oh, man, it's getting late. My mom wants me to be home in _fifteen minutes_! I'll call her to let her know that I'm running late, but Jesus. Crap. I'll still walk you home, though."

"Thanks," Iggy said. His mouth was tingling, he felt kind of dizzy, and the butterflies in his stomach had increased tenfold. But this time, the fluttering wasn't exactly unpleasant.


	4. Chapter 4

(Listening to: _Carry On _by F. U. N.)

Iggy and Nudge have a very special place in my heart. They're just so _cute_, and their dynamic is my favorite Flock dynamic. Thinking of doing a Iggy + Nudge + Gazzy chapter, because I can't get enough of these nerds. (And to help practice writing more complex scenes for a project I am doing.)

* * *

><p>Iggy sat at Anne's vast dining-room table, doing math homework. The tape-recorded voice used to read questions was smooth, pleasant, and utterly incomprehensible.<p>

"What the _hell _is a cube root," Iggy muttered, "and why in the hell am I going to need it?" You didn't need cube roots to build bombs, and you sure didn't need them to throw bombs at Erasers. For that you needed physics, which he couldn't take until his _junior year _here.

Not that they would stay here that long. Something would come up, and Max would get nervous, and they would be on the road again. And, once again, he would be lost.

So why bother with the freaking cube roots? Max had said that they needed to blend in, but he was doing fine. He was _blending_. Iggy groaned and let his head fall forward, hitting the table with a solid _thud_.

"What's the matter?" Nudge asked, her voice coming from the top of the stairs. "Can I help? Is it math?"

"No and yes," Iggy said, his head still on the table. "It's hell. Save yourself."

"Which math is it? Is it, like, factorials? I was reading about those. Is there an _i_? Because the _i _is like, this special variable. Not like an _x_, man. Haha, _x-man_. Anyway, the _i _is, like, super-special, so you have to treat it a certain way—if you have that, I can get the textbook Anne loaned me."

"No, it's cube roots," Iggy said.

"Oh!" Nudge said, and then there was the tapping of her feet on wood as she headed down the stairs to sit next to him. "You're listening to the audiobook, right? But… oh, Fang left his textbook in his bag. I'll use that. Heeey, he has _Oreos_! He won't mind if I take those." Plastic crinkled, and when Nudge spoke again, her mouth was full of food. "Anyway, cube roots are easy. It's like, reverse cubing, and all you have to do is the little factor tree, and put the remainders in the house, and I can help you! I can totally help you with these!" A chair scraped against the floor, and she settled down next to him, bouncing a little. "This is so much more fun than boring spelling, you know? I mean, who _cares _if ex-san-gwin-eight doesn't have a "j"?"

By the time they were done with the homework, Iggy knew more about cube roots than he cared to remember. "Thanks," he said, smoothing a hand over Nudge's hair. Thanks to the daily showers and wide variety of shampoos, it was softer than it had ever been.

"No problem," she said, and head-bumped his shoulder. "Always glad to help. I got a question for you, though. Like I'd ask Max but I don't think she knows, and I mean you don't know either but I'd still rather ask you, because you're better about not-knowing than Max generally is, you know?"

"Shoot," Iggy told her. "I'll do my best."

"So, like, if you _like like _somebody, but you don't want to tell 'em, but you still want to be their friend, what do you do?"

"I have no idea," Iggy said. "I don't have that much experience with, like _like liking _people."

"Figured," Nudge muttered, and hit her head against the table, groaning.

Iggy rubbed her back. "I'm going to quote that cartoon thing you watched with the girls that are actually space marines. Be true to yourself, and do you, and punch the haters in the face."

Nudge giggled. "Yes, I remember _that _episode of _Sailor Moon_."

"Sailor Moon doesn't sound half as cool as Space Marines," Iggy said. "For the record. But really, if you value your friendship with them then it's worth pushing past those feelings. And maybe in time you can talk to them about it. If we're still here."

"Um," Nudge said. "Thanks!" She hugged him tightly, nearly knocking them off of their chairs, and buried her face in his shoulder for a brief moment before pulling away. "Do you want me to teach you the next section?"

"Gross, no. I have to do Bio now—did you know that we're going to dissect a frog soon?"

"Eeew."

"Get to feel its guts and everything. The Gasman'll be so jealous." He frowned at her. "Don't you have spelling to do?"

Nudge sighed. "_Kind of_. Like, we have to do this dumb crap thing where we write a story with all the words in it, and last week the teacher was all _Tiffany-Krystal you can't just put all the words into two sentences_, so now I have to, like, _draaaaaag _it out, and I don't know what to write about! It's so dumb. Like, how even do you tell a story?"

"Tell it to the paper—write it, I mean, crud… _Write it _on the paper like you tell me what the sky looks like. Like, what're you writing your story about?"

"Cannibal bunnies," Nudge said promptly. "Only way to fit in the vocab words."

"O-kay. Write the story like you're telling me about these cannibal bunnies."

There was a pause, and then, "I nodded. I'm going to write about the dumb bunnies now, in my room, with the door shut."

Iggy smirked. "You're texting your _cru-ush_, aren't you?"

"Nooooo, why would you think that?" She headed up the stairs, and Iggy smiled after her.


	5. Chapter 5

(Listening to: _Nothing Left to Say/Rocks _by Imagine Dragons.)

I wrote this after reading IT. Specifically, the bit where Eddie Corcoran runs into his dead little brother. Dead Max is based partially off of "The Thing" from _Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark_.

Max has... a lot of underlying issues, and her issues with mortality definitely contribute to a part of her psyche. Another "issue" is the fact that she's a fourteen-year-old girl who has seen far too much shit. That tends to manifest in the form of dreams, and when you share a house with a psychic and have a reality-warping Voice in your head... shit happens.

* * *

><p>I woke up half a second away from screaming, my eyes snapping open and my breath catching in my throat. For a second I stayed in bed, hands clenching and unclenching, twisting the comforter.<p>

_It's just a dream_, I told myself. _ Just a dream, just a dream…_

Except it wasn't a dream. It was a memory from the School, from when I was eight and they had locked me in a room with another mutant, a winged one, a boy, and they had said that the doors wouldn't open unless…

Enough was enough, I decided, and pushed myself out of bed. I could shower, dress, and turn on all the lights in my room. This wouldn't be the first sleepless night I had spent, and it most likely wouldn't be the last. As I headed for the door, I glanced at the alarm clock next to my bed. After a week of its blaring startling me awake with memories of cages and buzzers, I had turned off the sound, but kept the clock. Right now its red numbers read 2:15.

Just what I needed. Six hours of being left alone with my thoughts. Jesus.

I stormed out of my room and into the bathroom, turned the shower on to scald, stripped, and hopped in. I scrubbed hard enough for it to feel like I was ripping off my skin. It wasn't necessary—ever since we had started staying here, we had showered every morning, and most of the nights, too. There wasn't a layer of dirt and dead skin coating me that needed to be removed.

But some stupid, naïve part of me honestly believed that if I scrubbed hard enough I could clean off the nightmares.

After what felt like hours, I turned the shower off and hopped out. I wrapped a towel around myself and opened a window to let out the steam that had built up. The cool night air contrasted nicely with the sauna-like atmosphere of the bathroom, and I breathed it in, closing my eyes. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. I could just wait out the night here. Yeah, that would be okay.

I grabbed my hairbrush and started yanking it through my hair rhythmically. Yesterday's flight had left it tangled, and I had been too tired to brush it then. As I yanked through the tangles, tears started to my eyes. Eventually I hit a knot that blind hacking wouldn't get out, so I stood in front of the mirror, tilting my head as I brushed, trying to figure out what to do.

And then my face changed. Not into Eraser Max, no, that would have been too _normal_.

The Max I was staring at had been dead for a while. Her rotting skin was stretched tight across her face, and her teeth were showing through. It looked like she was grinning, a horrible rictus. Most of her nose had rotted away, leaving behind a little nub of bone and two gaping holes in the center of her face. Her eyes were sunken but still horribly bright, and her hair was lank and matted with dirt. As I watched, a roach crawled across her face.

Her eyes, glittering with some kind of supernatural menace, were fixed on mine. I wanted to do _something_—puke, run away, smash the mirror—but I couldn't. I was frozen stiff, hairbrush still in hand.

"Max," Dead Max said. Her voice was hoarse, but there was something worse about it. She was _smug_. She had me exactly where she wanted me. "We meet at last." Another roach slowly crawled out of her mouth and scrambled down her neck, down her bare chest.

Worse than the roaches, there was the smell of rotting flesh, of vomit, and of shit. It was coming out of her mouth, and getting into the bathroom.

"What do you want?" My voice was shrill, hysterical. I gripped my hand around the handle of the hairbrush.

She reached out with one rotting hand to touch the mirrorglass that separated us and tapped a bony finger against it. "As you are," she said, slowly, "I was. As I am, you will be."

"What does that mean? Who the hell are you?" Was I going to die? I had gotten used to cheating death over the past months, but to see this—it shook me. I wouldn't lie. It shook me a lot. You could run from death, you could save your own ass again and again, but if you were _definitely _going to die then there was nothing you could do.

Or maybe I was just going crazy. But somehow, that thought wasn't reassuring. Looking at Dead Max, rotting away, grinning that horrible toothy grin of hers—I would rather be dead than have to see that every night.

"Everything dies, Max," she said, and tapped on the mirrorglass again. "Think about that."

And then she was gone, and the stench of rot went with her. I was alone in the bathroom.

I took a deep breath in, let it out, and found that I was able to move again. Slowly, carefully, I covered my face with the towel, making sure that there was some of it in my mouth. And then I screamed.

I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until my throat felt like it was bleeding and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

(Listening to: _The Freedom Song _by Jason Mraz.)

I apologize for the brevity of the fight scene, but I wanted to highlight the vast difference between Nudge and these three (human) girls. Even Nudge, one of the weakest fighters of the Flock, is able to take them out without much difficulty... or at least knock them down fast enough to get away.

Chari, believe it or not, is canon. She was mentioned in one line by JJ. I took the liberty of giving her a younger sister and a cigarette.

Nudge and Ella being email buddies is unfortunately not canon.

* * *

><p>"Hey," somebody whispered. "Hey. You. Tiff."<p>

Nudge carefully looked up from the math test that she was laboring over. She had finished it ten minutes ago, but didn't want to hand it in—they had an hour to do the test, and she didn't want to be the freak who had finished in half the time. So instead she was drawing on her scrap paper, filling the pages with climbing vines, curlicues, and roses. Roses were the hardest, because you had to get all the petals _just _right, and they spiraled, too. She had been halfway through a decent one when her fake-name was whispered, which had caused her to flinch, messing up a petal.

She looked for the source of her voice and found it one seat behind her and to the right. The whispering girl was Charlotte. She was all right—she kept herself to herself. Nobody bothered her, but nobody seemed to talk to her either. They just let her be. Even in gym class, when her lumbering bulk held her back from keeping up with the rest of them, nobody called her a slowpoke. All in all, she was forgettable. Nudge didn't hate her or anything, even though they had never exactly been friendly. But why was she trying to talk in the middle of a math test?

"What is it?" Nudge kept her voice so low that she was more mouthing the words than whispering them.

Charlotte pointed at her paper, which was mostly blank. "Let me copy."

Nudge blinked. She had stayed up half of last night, studying for this stupid test, nearly crying even though she knewthe material, doing drills over and over again—and now Charlotte just wanted to _take _that? Anger, hot and wet, flooded up her throat and nearly choked her. "No!" she hissed.

The boy directly behind her flinched, and hunched further over his math test. Charlotte didn't say anything, but narrowed her eyes.

Now that the words were out of her mouth and the anger had gone as quickly as it had came, Nudge felt a little bad about how nasty she had been. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Charlotte didn't look like she would take too kindly to it. The chubby girl's eyes were hard and dark, like she was a dog about to bite.

Nudge knew about dogs. And she knew when to let them lie, so she turned back to her drawing of roses.

The rest of the hour passed slowly, in dragging seconds and minutes, and towards the end of it Nudge could feel herself getting progressively antsier and antsier. There was no point to this sitting around, she wasn't doing anything, nobody was even learning anything. She drummed her fingers against the wood of her desk and fidgeted out the last ten minutes.

After the test they had science, which was fun. They got to buddy up for it, and Nudge sat with a girl named Hsinyo. Charlotte tended to switch buddies, and today she was sitting across the room with Mike, a skinny black boy who wore oversized glasses. Science was okay. She was good at it, and she liked it, but it wasn't interesting in the same way that math was.

And after science, the day was _over_! Nudge could have jumped for joy, but instead she just gathered up her jacket and her bag and headed out, quiet as anybody else—that is to say, not very. Hsinyo was worrying about the math test, and the small cluster of girls that Nudge usually hung out with was pretty worried too.

"Hey," said Mari, the unofficial leader, "Tiffany, want to come back to my place? With the rest of us? We could go over answers."

"That sounds great!" Nudge said. She had never been over at a friend's house before—well, she had never had _friends _before. The Flock was family, and besides, they didn't have a house. And she and Ella would send each other emails, but were they really friends if they didn't talk? "But I gotta let my sister know first. Is it okay if I catch up with you guys?"

Mari shrugged. "Sure," she said. "But be fast, okay?"

Nudge nodded and headed off. It didn't take long to find Max, and Max was fine with her going over to Mari's.

"Just call if you're going to be over for the night, alright?" Max told her. "Anne'll wig out otherwise." She laughed bitterly. "Because a group of preteen girls is clearly the worst thing we have to worry about."

Something about the way she said that made Nudge feel dirty on the inside, like God was looking down and laughing at her and He was using Max's mouth to do that. In that moment she hated Max, just a little, but the feeling passed even quicker than the anger that she had felt toward Charlotte, leaving in its place remorse and disgust. How could she feel that way about Max? She loved Max. Max would do anything for her, so Nudge didn't have any right to feel as horrible as she did.

"Thank you," she said, meaning _I'm sorry_. And then, carefully, she leaned in and hugged Max. The older girl was warm, and she smelled nice—like laundry detergent and strawberry shampoo, a welcome change from the usual sweat-and-dirt combination that she and the rest of the Flock usually had.

Max shrugged, but hugged her back. "You'll want to get going," Max said.

Nudge's eyes flew open. "Oh, crap!" Mari had said to hurry, and here she was dawdling and they would probably not let her in, they were probably laughing at her right now, the skinny freaky girl with the messy hair who thought she was all that because she could do the numbers a little better than the rest of them.

As she sprinted off, Nudge felt like she was about to vomit. There were hot tears burning in her eyes.

Sure enough, Mari and her friends hadn't waited… but then again, she could catch up. They wouldn't mind. In fact, that's what Mari had said, right? She'd be fine.

Nudge adjusted the shoulderstraps of her bag and headed off down the road. It was full of uniformed students, in groups that ranged from seven (obnoxious, noisy, clamoring teens that Nudge wanted with all her heart to be a part of) to two (couples, holding hands, talking quietly), but the further away she got from the school, the fewer people there were. After two blocks there were barely any kids her age, and Mari lived about a mile away, near the pizza place…

She was about halfway there when she bumped into the girl standing in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Sorry," Nudge mumbled, and edged out of her way.

"Hey, no, hold up," the girl said, and grabbed Nudge's arm. Her grip was strong, tight. Nudge stared at her. She was about Max's age, maybe a little older, and easily just as tall. She was blonde, but had dyed purple streaks into her hair, and the expression on her face was one of disgust. Like Nudge was a piece of crap on the sidewalk that had gotten on her shoe. Like she didn't matter.

"What do you want?" Nudge said, trying to pull out of the girl's hold. She found that she couldn't, unless she wanted to really put effort into it, and putting effort into it would make her look weird. Superstrong. Inhuman. So she stood still.

"You Tiffany-Krystal?" The girl asked.

"Yeah, who are-"

The girl slapped her across the face before she could finish the question. Nudge winced, her face stinging.

"What was that-"

Another slap, this one backhanded. Tears began to well up in Nudge's eyes as she twisted in the girl's grasp. And then there were other hands on her, pulling on her other arm. Another girl, shorter than the first, was holding her.

"Chari's here," the second girl said.

The first girl adjusted her grip so it was no longer one-handed. Instead she held Nudge's arm with both of her hands, one on top of the other, like she was about to give a wicked Indian burn.

The third girl came strolling up the sidewalk, backpack in hand. She had Charlotte's dirty-brown hair and brown eyes. The tights that she was wearing were ripped, and her shirt was only half-buttoned. She was holding a cigarette in one hand.

"Hey," Chari said, and nodded at Nudge. She put her cigarette in her mouth, and the next word was articulated around it. "Bitch."

And then she punched Nudge across the face. It was hard enough that Nudge saw stars, and heard the _crack _of her nose breaking, but light enough that she didn't fall out of the other two girls' arms.

Instead of crying, she bit her lip. Better to just take this. They'd go away soon enough. No need to get into a fight with them.

"So," Chari said conversationally, like Nudge's blood wasn't on her knuckles, "My little sister doing bad enough in math already, and you decide to screw her over even more? It gonna kill you to let her see the paper?" She yanked Nudge's face up so they were seeing eye-to-eye. "Ain't like you got friends anyway, won't kill you to be nice."

_I have friends! _Nudge wanted to say. But she didn't. Because really, did she have friends? Mari and the rest had walked off without caring about whether she could catch up or not, the Flock only kept her around because she was just as much of a freak as they were, and Ella was in Arizona. Tears welled up in her eyes, hot and angry, and Chari shoved her face away in disgust before taking another drag off of the cigarette.

"How 'bout I make sure you remember this," Chari said, and Nudge's eyes went wide.

The cigarette.

Max had told her about this, about how some of the scientists would burn their experiments. Max had told her that it left permanent scars. And if Chari had no problems with breaking a nose…

Nudge yanked her arm free of the purple-haired girl's grip and blindly slammed her elbow into her face. The purple-haired girl went down, hitting her head hard on the pavement. Nudge yanked the other girl off of her. It wasn't hard at all to sweep the shorter girl's feet out from under her, and it felt kind of good watching her hit the ground.

Chari had dropped her cigarette. Her brown eyes were wide with disbelief. She had adopted a fighting stance, fists up and in front of her, but she wasn't fast enough to block Nudge's right hook.

Her jaw broke with a _crunch_ and she hit the ground.

Nudge stood in the center of their bodies, snapped her nose into place, and ran off.

Oh, God, what was she going to do? She couldn't go back to Anne's like this, Anne would pitch a fit if Nudge told her about Chari. She couldn't even say it was Erasers, Max would pitch a fit if Nudge told her that there were Erasers, would insist that they all leave _right now_, and if they left then there would be no more school, no more learning, just running and being tired and angry all the time. And she couldn't go to Mari's with blood on her face and hands because Mari would find out that Nudge punched out three high-school girls, and then word would get around, and everybody would know that she was a freak…

Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, a good couple of miles away from the scene of the fight, Nudge began to cry.


	7. Chapter 7

Max/Sam is this really interesting relationship in that we barely know anything about it, so we have almost free rein to do as we please. I tried to keep this close to canon, and I hope I succeeded. For a while I thought, "how about I write this and give them _no chemistry whatsoever_," but then I realized that giving them _some _chemistry is kind of important. For the record, though, I don't think that they would work long-term. Max has a lot of social and emotional maturity to develop before she's able to enter any kind of long-term relationship, and it's in her best interests to stay single. (And to stay far, far, far away from Fang.) I might do another installment with these two to more accurately capture the awkwardness of their relationship and Max's "culture shock." That being said, that hypothetical installment and this actual installment are situated very much outside of canon, as in canon the raid on the school (and the Flock's departure from Virginia) took place two days after Max and Sam's first and only date.

* * *

><p>"So, um, I see you survived hell dinner," I said, and rubbed at the back of my neck with one mittened hand. Unfortunately, that threw me off balance, and I had to windmill my arms so I could stand up straight. Jesus. Normally I wasn't this clumsy. Then again, normally I was standing on the solid ground with my own two feet, instead of balancing on ice with knives strapped to friggin' boots. And if I had my way, "normally" would be "all the time." But Sam had showed up at my—well, Anne's—door in the morning, and had practically <em>begged <em>me to come skating with him. Something about his relatives getting into a fight. So instead of sitting on the couch, watching _It's a Wonderful Life _with Nudge and Gazzy, I was out here, freezing my feathery butt off.

Sam laughed. "Survived is the right word for it. My mother is the head general of the passive-aggressive brigade, and my dad accidentally kissed drunk Aunt Phyllis."

I winced, and an image of Fang kissing the Red-Haired Wonder flashed across my mind. "Sounds awful."

"That's not even the worst of it," he said. "She _kissed him back_."

We laughed at that, but our amusement was cut short when I tripped yet again, my left skate skidding on a particularly slippery patch of ice. Falling was an awful feeling, because I was spiraling out of control and there was nothing I could do about it. At most, I could brace myself for impact, but even then… it felt like time was slowing down, and the inevitable impact was made even more painful because of that.

Just before my ass made jarring contact with the ice, Sam caught me. He grabbed me by the forearm and hauled me up, his other arm around my waist. "Gotcha."

Our noses bumped, and we pulled back, grinning nervously.

On one hand, I had butterflies in my stomach and I'm pretty sure I was blushing. On another, I wanted to get these skates off, and I wanted to get these skates off _now_. If Ari and the evil Max showed up like they had last time, I'd have to do a U and A—no way would I be able to fight with these unreliable no-good ten-pound knife boots on my feet.

Hang on. Ten-pound knife boots?

"Hey, Sam," I said slowly. "Can you teach me how to use these again?" He had tried earlier, but, not wanting to venture too far out onto the open ice, I had insisted on clinging to the wall like everybody else.

"Sure," he said.

About a half hour later, I was starting to get the hang of it. It was gliding, not stepping—kind of like flying with a good downwind, except on ice and with knife boots. And it didn't hurt that I got to hold Sam's hand while we skated. To top it off, my mittens stopped him from being able to tell that my palms were ridiculously clammy with nervous sweat.

"This isn't as bad as I thought," I told Sam, and he smiled at me. It was the same smile as when I had told him that if you had enough of a running start, you would be able to pull off a spinning kick and slice somebody's throat open—not that it would be practical, of course. He smiled at me like he was, surprise surprise, actually _enjoying _my company.

An odd wave of emotions passed over me in that moment. First and foremost was something tingly and _warm_ and altogether unfamiliar, but the second was more concrete, more grounded. Hatred. To be more specific, jealous hatred. For whatever whacked-up reason, my brain was all ready to _hate _Sam… For what? Teaching me to skate?

The answer sprang unbidden to mind. _For knowing something you didn't. For being better than you. For being more _human _than you._

Jesus. I was one screwed-up mutant.

"Max?" Sam was waving his hand in front of my face. "Earth to Max?"

"Huh?" I blinked at him. "Oh, sorry. I was just thinking, you know… this is really nice. You make me feel more… normal." I reached for words, trying to come up with an explanation that didn't offend him or reveal the giant feathered elephant in the room that I was trying to keep under wraps. "Like, growing up, being a mu-missionary's kid and all, I didn't talk to people that much. Like people outside of my family. And you're here, and you're… y'know. You. And I dunno, you just make me feel… better." And nervous, and ready to puke, and stupidly warm and tingly inside…

And _damn_, that was one hell of an emotional vomit. Usually I didn't dredge up those feelings unless I was angry at somebody, with "somebody" in this instance meaning "Fang."

"Careful," Sam said, "you're going to slip again."

I righted myself, and he continued.

"You know, I kind of feel the opposite? Like in a good way, though. If I make you feel more normal, you make me feel… and act… differently. Like when you said that thing about using the skates to cut somebody's throat open. Nobody's ever said anything to me like that before, and, well… I like it."

_And I like you_, I thought. But instead of saying that and spewing more emotional puke, I said instead, "Race you five laps around the rink."

His hazel eyes flashed in the pale wintery sunlight as he grinned at me. "You're on."


	8. Chapter 8

I had originally intended to do something more serious and/or more action-based, but then I was like nah fuck that. Have this literally tooth-rotting garbage, you godless heathens.

The next two installments might be Gazzy and Iggy, but they won't be Gazzy + Iggy. For whatever reason, my brain runs into a roadblock when I try to write those two.

* * *

><p>"This is so boring," Max II groaned, her legs propped up against the wall of the van. "I am so bored." The freaks and the rest of the school they were going to were on some field trip to a farm, which meant that there was no way to watch them inconspicuously. So that meant no teams of Erasers, no binoculars, no raids, no <em>fun<em>.

Ari, who had taken advantage of her empty seat to stretch his legs out, shrugged. "We could play cards." Somebody had left a deck in the glove compartment, and they had plenty of time to teach themselves, so more often than not they ended up playing poker for matchsticks.

At the moment, the cards were scattered across the back of the van. The new Max had been building card houses for a while, but then the cards had fluttered out of place, and she had given up in disgust. It wouldn't be that hard to put them back in order and play blackjack, or something.

"Lame," Max II said, before flipping her legs over and behind her head and sitting up on her knees. "That sounds like something that boring people do. Let's do something _fun_."

"Like…"

She rolled her eyes. "Let's drive to DC and beat up drug dealers like we're comic book characters. Let's rob a bank. Let's do _something_, instead of sitting here like a pair of useless things that sit." She flicked a card at him, and it bounced off of his nose. He caught it and stared at it—Ace of Diamonds.

"We could beat each other up," Ari suggested. Jeb had expressly forbidden them from fighting each other, an order that they both protested at great length and defied whenever they had the opportunity.

"Hmmm," Max II said. And then, "Wait. They went to a farm, they're going through a maze… holy _shit_, Batchelder, it's Halloween!"

"That's a bad word."

"Halloween?"

"No, the other one." Ari rubbed the back of his neck. "You know." He had used it once, and then Jeb had chewed him out for five minutes straight. Something about _inappropriate language_ and _lack of respect _and a bunch of other stuff that Ari couldn't be bothered to remember.

Max II rolled her eyes. "Fine, I won't say it anymore. But _anyway_. It's Halloween. Halloween in the evening. Halloweevning. Let's go get a bucketload of chocolate and terrify small children."

Ari frowned. That would be nice. He had never done anything like that—he was too small when Jeb left, and when Jeb came back, it's not like they were going to go trick-or-treating—Jeb had Important Things to do, and Ari had scientists who wanted to study him. But… "We don't have costumes."

"Um, earth to Batchelder. I have _wings_. You turn into a _wolf_."

"Oh, right," Ari said, and shrugged. "Let's go then."

Max II grinned. "Let's do this!"

They scrambled out of the van, stretched stiff muscles, and headed off down the road that led to the school. The sun was setting and, aside from a few birds screaming at each other, it was quiet out. As they walked, Ari focused on morphing out. His face lengthened and his hands became more pawlike, but he tried to keep his height under control. Unmorphed, he was average height, maybe an inch or two more. That was good enough, and it helped him blend. No need to be 6"8 when he knocked on doors.

…Not that it wouldn't be cool to see some soccer mom's face twist up in fear and shock, but he didn't want to have the cops called on him again, and especially not when there was candy to be had.

"Hey, there's a place," Max II said, pointing. The house in question was decked out with jack-o-lanterns, orange lights, and fake gravestones in the yard. "Gimme a sec."

She tugged her jacket off and tied it around her waist, unfurled her wings a little. As she headed up the driveway, Ari saw her tense and untense the muscles, finding a position that she could hold steady for hours.

It turned out that nobody was home, but they had left behind a small orange bucket shaped like a jack-o-lantern. Inside the bucket was enough candy to put a grown man into sugar shock—Milky Ways, Snickers, Twizzlers, even those gross little packets of jelly beans…

Ari whistled. "Sweet."

They grabbed the basket and headed off.

As they headed down the road, they got closer to town and the groups of little kids in their stupid costumes. There were even a few groups of teenagers, too—kids who hadn't gone on the field trip. One of the groups was all dressed as werewolves.

"Sick costume, dude," a werewolf girl said, and high-fived Ari.

Ari high-fived her back. Max II snorted.

"Yeah," she said, when the teens had passed them by, "cool costume. So realistic. Did you get it at Party City?"

"Walmart, actually," Ari said. "Where'd you get those wings? Target?"

Max II heaved a sigh. "K-mart, you uncultured swine."

They grinned at each other, even though neither of them knew what "swine" meant, and only heard it when Jeb was dressing down an Eraser for beating up _poor Max_ too much.

They ended up getting plastic bags from the grocery store and wandering around the neighborhood, filling up their bags and doggedly ignoring the adults who wondered why they weren't in school. Although they ran into a few groups of kids, they didn't actually scare any of them—the kids would just look at them with studied disinterest and wander off.

As the hours dragged on, they swapped candy, split it, and even flat out _gave _it to each other as the bags on their arms got heavier and heavier. The plastic bucket that Max II had grabbed at the first house was placed, empty, onto the head of a passing kid.

They stayed out long after the sun went down, and only when grownups started to look at them weird did they start on back.

The night was unseasonably warm, and felt almost like late August. The moon hung low in the sky, casting a sickly silver light on everything.

"Well," Max II said. "That was stupid and pointless, but not as bad as all of the other stupid and pointless things I've done. And it beats sitting around watching the lame Max whine _oooon _and _ooon _about how awful her life is." She paused, rifled through her bag. "Want some Sour Patch Kids? I can't stand 'em."

"Yeah, sure." Ari took the offered candy, shoved it into his bag. "You know…"

She turned to look at him, the moon reflected in her eyes.

"I never went trick-or-treating before, is all," he finished lamely.

Max II shrugged. "Me neither."

They headed back to the van.


	9. Chapter 9

(Listening to: _On Top of the World _by Imagine Dragons.)

I like Iggy a lot more than I let on, because character interp lends a lot of layers to his character, several of which conflict with each other. This conflict, along with his mistrust and self-esteem issues, really shape his character. I hope that I've managed to portray some of this conflict while keeping the mood relatively peaceful.

Up next is Gazzy, who is one of my least favorite characters along with the fucking dog. Gazzy is like... he's white bread. There is nothing _there _unless you add supersweet jam, and eventually people just start eating the jam because who the hell likes white bread? So I have to make Gazzy whole-wheat bread in order for the jam to work.

* * *

><p>The last bell rang, and a collective sigh went throughout the school. The day—the past few days, really—had dragged slower than a half-dead fish swimming uphill through mud, and the relief in the classroom was palpable as students gathered up bags and coats and headed out, jostling each other and chattering.<p>

Iggy sat alone at his desk, drumming his fingers. When a ten-count had passed, he carefully slid his chair back and went to his locker to get his bag. He had tried to get his stuff with the others on an earlier Friday, only to find himself getting horribly lost and bumping into Henry Browers. Browers had hit five-eight and one-eighty at the age of fourteen, and he didn't mind letting people know it. Even though Iggy was four inches taller, he was about thirty pounds lighter, and that was after breakfast. It would look weird for him to hand Browers' ass to him.

The question, however, wasn't if he could beat Browers in a fight or not. The question was how much Max would chew him out if he did.

Iggy's mouth twisted as he shrugged into his jacket and shouldered his backpack. School was great and all, but ever since Max's little "lay low" speech he had found himself twitching more often, his hands balling into fists and his muscles tensing. It was one thing to walk into a classroom and to know that you could, with some bullshitting, handle what it threw at you. It was another thing to know that your older sister had expressly forbade you to stick up for yourself, so you were stuck playing catch-up, watching your own back, _and _helping said older sister with her homework.

Speaking of—she would be waiting for him. Fang had left earlier than usual today, heading out with the rest. He had said something about a date, with a girl that he hadn't bothered to introduce to the rest of them, or even to Iggy and Max. It was rude, but at the same time Iggy could see what he meant. None of them were exactly good company, and he wouldn't want to sabotage Fang's shot at getting a date to go well.

Hands in his pockets, Iggy headed toward the door at the end of the hall. That was when the voice spoke.

"Hey, Jeff…"

Iggy recognized the voice—that of a boy who sat in the back of the room in English and rarely knew the answers… Bernie Goldstein. His voice was still sleep-thick, even though it was the end of the day.

"Hey, Bernie," Iggy said. "What's up, man?"

"Ah, man, where did everybody go? I zonked in the caf again, didn't I… shoot, man." Bernie continued to mumble as he opened his locker, unleashed what sounded like the mother of all paper avalanches, grabbed his bag, and slammed the paper back into the locker. "Anyway, Jeff. Me 'n some other guys, public school guys and a few who go here, we were wonderin' if you wanted to hang out with us. They're building a car, see, or repairing one… Word got 'round that you're good at shop."

"I'm okay."

"So, d'y'wanna come with?"

It took Iggy a moment to decide. Max was still waiting for him, but the other three had probably dragged her off already or she had other plans for her Friday afternoon, Bernie about Nudge's height and could be easily beaten in a fight, if it came to that, and it wasn't like he was stupid enough to go to school without anything to protect him—he had gotten Nudge to buy him some Mace about the time that school had started.

"Sure, fine," he said, and shrugged. "This better not be a joke."

"Nah, nah," Bernie mumbled. "C'mon." He started off, and it took most of Iggy's concentration to trail the sound of his footsteps through the still-crowded hallways, but once they were outside, it was easier _and _there was the benefit of crunching leaves and gravel.

They walked out through the back door, over a few sets of hills, and, just when Iggy thought _okay, this guy _has _to be screwing with me_, they hit pavement again. They walked for a few blocks and then Bernie stopped and rapped his fist against a large sheet of metal—a door?

"Hey, open up… I got Jeff…"

There was a creaking sound and then another voice spoke. "Huh. You did. Hey, man."

Silence fell for a moment before Bernie added, "Jeff, he wants a high five."

"Right." Iggy held his hand up, and they high-fived.

"Jeff's blind," Bernie said helpfully.

"No shit," the other guy said. "I'm Blake, blind guy." He went back inside, and Iggy followed.

Judging from the smell of motor oil and the sounds of metal on metal, it was a garage. Judging from the way that the latter sound didn't , it was a small one.

"Hey, assholes, this is Jeff from the rich asshole school. He's blind. He's gonna help us with Cassie."

"Hey, Jeff," a few voices chorused.

Somebody towards Iggy's right spoke up. "I'm Dawson."

Another voice, this one coming from closer and a bit in front, "Carlos." His voice was kind of muffled, like he was underneath something—probably the car called Cassie.

"Miguel." Miguel's voice sounded weird, kind of hoarse but at the same time _not_. Whatever.

"So, Jeff," Blake said. "Cassie is our project. Our baby. Our pride and joy. But the thing is, we're having some trouble positioning shit inside her guts, and by _some trouble _I mean Fumblefingers McGee over there broke five hundred bucks worth of stuff inside of two days."

"Hey!" Dawson protested. "I wouldn't'a broke it if you hadn't'a forgotten to fucking grease it!" Something shifted against the floor as he stood and crossed the room.

"Guys, guys, don't fight," Bernie said pleadingly. "Chill, c'mon. Jeff here'll set the spares straight, okay?"

"How he gonna do that if he fuckin' blind?" This came from Miguel.

Iggy flipped him off, a gesture that had become second nature over the past month or so. "I don't need sight to see how ass-ugly you are," he snapped. "I can do it just fine. That's why I'm here, isn't it?"

Miguel snorted. "Oh yeah? Why should I trust you?"

Something small and petty in Iggy's mind flared up. Maybe it was what Max would call "mucho macho pigheadedness," maybe it was a reaction to how slow most of the kids in his class talked to him, like being blind made him retarded, maybe it was just annoyance at being questioned at what he was best at. "You know that stinkbomb in the men's room a week back? That was me."

Low whistles sounded throughout the garage.

"I told you so, assholes!" Bernie's voice was shrill, triumphant. "Pay up!"

A groan of disgust came from Carlos, still wedged under the car. "Fuck you, man."

Iggy crossed his arms over his chest, grinned. "So, what do you want me to do?"

What they wanted him to do turned out to be a lot less difficult than he had expected—but at the same time challenging on a level that he had yet to experience. He was used to bombs, which were fairly simple. If you assumed that a bomb was going to blow up and kill you if you did _one tiny thing _wrong, then you would hold your breath around it and even out okay. Cars were different. Cars were three-dimensional in a way that bombs weren't. They required more care than bombs did, in a way. You didn't build a bomb to last ten, twenty, forty years.

Nudge would be better at this, he thought once or twice. But then he realized that at the same time, she wouldn't be, because what he was doing required a finesse that she didn't have yet. There was a difference between knowingwhich parts went where and actually placing the parts there with your own two hands.

By the time they had called it quits for the night, he was stinking with grease and sweat. His wings ached from being held in so tightly, and his back ached from all the twisting and bending he had done to check that everything was being positioned correctly. His arms were especially sore, and he sat on the garage floor stretching them out.

"Hey, Jeff. Wanna beer?" It was Blake who spoke.

Iggy shrugged. Anne had given them a lecture about underage drinking and peer pressure, but she hadn't taken mutant metabolism into account—he probably wouldn't get that drunk unless he had three or four, not that he would have said that in front of the other kids. "Sure, why not."

A cool can was passed into his hand, and he opened it and took a sip. It wasn't bad—it tasted salty and sour, but the sourness was mild enough that he didn't mind it.

The others had also grabbed beers, and it was Blake who proposed the toast.

"Here's to Cassie."

"To Cassie," Iggy said along with the rest, and took a pull of his beer. No, it definitely wasn't bad. "Hey, where do you get these?" A guy who got beer could get other things, according to Anne. And "other things" were definitely right up Iggy's alley.

"Some girl in your school has a fake ID," Dawson said. "We get the money, give it to Bernie, he gives it to her, she gives it to Carlos. It's okay if Carlos has beer, 'cause he's poor. But she ain't cheap."

"Fuck you," Carlos said, but he didn't sound angry. "But yeah. I get the beer; bring it back here, and every week we chip in five bucks each for some more. If you start hanging out here on the reg, you'll be paying that too."

_Hanging out here… _The words floated in Iggy's mind. Could he do that? Could he spend time with these guys, who weren't trying to pull one over on him or trick him later?

He thought of Gazzy, of Nudge, of Angel. They would be almost done with their homework by now. Max would be studying for something or getting mad at somebody, as was her way. If he was back at Anne's right now he would be studying off of his audiobooks, or teaming up with Gazzy to take apart the fire alarm that they had found a week ago, or listening to Nudge talk about the kids in her class. They were his family, and he loved them instinctively, fiercely, and with intensity similar to anger.

But this afternoon, when words flowed as easily as the beer he was sipping… this was a different kind of emotion, one that he hadn't experienced yet and one that he wouldn't mind feeling more of.

A cool breeze blew into the garage, soothing his sore muscles but not chilling him, and Iggy asked himself: could he come back to this place the way that the others did?

"Yeah," he said out loud, and crumpled his now-empty can in one hand before pushing himself to his feet. "But I'd better get going back now."

His declaration was met with a few grunts, a few goodbyes, and he headed off into the early autumn evening. Leaves crunched underneath his shoes as he carefully retraced his steps, heading back—first to the school, and then to his family.


	10. Chapter 10

(Listening to: _Stop and Stare _by One Republic.)

Max has a lot of subconscious issues, a lot of flaws as a leader, and her relationship with Fang doesn't help her deal with those issues and flaws. In fact, their familiarity stops them from trying to learn more uncomfortable truths about each other and themselves. Their relationship is a comfortable thing, as long as neither of them pushes the boundary of what they think of as "okay." Their relationship is a coping mechanism. They don't have a healthy relationship, but Max isn't perceptive enough to understand that. Even though others are, and they tell her as much, she's not mature enough to break it off. Which is to be expected (but not excused) from a fourteen-year-old girl.

(I'm just procrastinating writing Gazzy.)

* * *

><p>"Fang?" I asked, hesitating in his doorway. "If your light was off, I wouldn't be here, but… I suppose you're awake. Can I come in?"<p>

The lump of covers on the bed stirred, and Fang surfaced, nodded.

"Thanks." I went in and sat on the end of his bed, crossing my legs.

He stared at me silently, taking me in. Pajamas, messy hair, pale skin, wide eyes—I found myself blushing, which was stupid. Fang had seen me with blood on my face, had seen me in the flimsy hospital gowns of the school, had seen me beaten half to death. Why was I so flustered about him seeing me in my pajamas?

…Because of _why _he was seeing me in my pajamas.

"Eraser Max?" he guessed.

I shook my head. "You're close, though. I just…" I trailed off, leaned back against the wall.

He scrambled out of the blankets to sit beside me, and wrapped a wing around me, pulled me closer. After a moment of gut-churning silence, I leaned my head against his shoulder.

This sucked. I was Max the Invincible, and now a few lousy nightmares had shaken me, gotten me to the point where I couldn't even think right. Jesus, what was my brain doing? First it gave me the Voice, now it was saddling me with nightmares worse and weirder than my memories of the School. What was next? When would it stop?

"Tell me about it," Fang said.

I shrugged. "It was… like a normal day. I woke up, and I was brushing my teeth, and I looked at myself in the mirror. And it was like… I wasn't Eraser Max, or anything like that, but there was something _wrong _with me that I couldn't see. And I tried to touch my face, to see what was the matter, but I couldn't feel myself. Like, it wasn't that my hands didn't feel my face—my face didn't feel my hands either. And then I woke up."

He grunted.

"What do you think it _means_?" I touched my face. I could feel it just fine, but what if I couldn't?

Fang shrugged. "Don't eat Doritos at midnight?" When I jabbed him with my elbow, he sighed. "I don't know, Max. I don't get dreams like that. Maybe it's the Voice."

"I dunno," I said. "There was a significant lack of preaching."

We fell into an easy silence, one that we hadn't shared for God knows how long. It was nice to have my head on his shoulder, to not be cold and wet and freezing, and to have _him_, with all of his weirdness and issues. I knew him like the back of my hand, and I never wanted that to change.

"It was like I wasn't _me_," I told him. "Like I was somebody else and it was some random body I was stuck in. And… I have to be me. I'm the best at that job. It was like you guys didn't need me anymore. Like you were fine with letting some random take care of you."

Fang was silent for a moment, and then cleared his throat. "We'll always need you," he said, his voice a little rougher than usual. "I'll always need you. And I'll always know it's you."

I thought about the Red-Haired Wonder, then. Would he put his arm around her the same way he put his wing around me? Would he say stuff like that to her?

No, I realized. He wouldn't, because he didn't know her. He knew me, understood me in a way that he would never understand her. Our years of growing up together had tied us together tighter than family, and no amount of weird feelings would change that. He was _mine_, and so was the rest of the Flock. All I had to worry about was them growing to like some random more than me. And I mean, that wouldn't happen—I'm clearly the epitome of loveable.

With that knowledge came giddiness. Laughter bubbled up in my chest, and all of a sudden this room, this house, even this entire _town _felt like it was too small. "Do you want to go flying?" I asked Fang.

"Right now?"

"Yeah. In our pajamas." We had done it as kids—it wasn't the warmest thing, but it was a lot more fun than getting changed at some ridiculously late (or early) hour.

"Okay."

I pried open his window and we headed out, letting ourselves fall a few feet before spreading our wings and taking off. The night air was cool and slick on my face, to the point where I could have been swimming. The stars, gleaming faintly above us, gave everything a dreamlike quality. But I knew that this wasn't a dream—my dreams were a lot worse.

We soared up, higher and higher, until Anne's mansion looked like a decked-out dollhouse. A few thousand feet up in the air, we circled each other, flew in figure eights, and even let ourselves free-fall before snapping our wings out and returning to our previous altitude.

A few birds flew through the sky, and there were a few cars driving on the winding roads, but nobody bothered us. Of course they didn't—they couldn't see us. We were, pardon the pun, as free as birds. If we wanted to, we could go anywhere, anywhere at all.

Hours later, shivering and sweaty, we clambered back in through Fang's window. I headed out of his room to shower, but he grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into a hug.

"Ew, gross," I protested, and wriggled out of his hold.

He looked down at me impassively, and then grinned.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

I headed off down the hallway, showered, and went back to sleep.

I didn't dream.


End file.
